Thursday, December 31, 2015

Evolution of Evolution

The proposed idea of evolution and its stages by Uncle Darwin (Evolution as such...)

The Later Idea in Motion

The stage of the Worker (survival of the fittest, domestication, mutation due to environmental pressure among the species)


The stage of the married Man (pangenesis, gradualism and common descent among hominids and primates)

My idea at the end of the day (Truism)


P.S: Thanks Uncle Darwin for making everything so simple

Thursday, December 10, 2015

My Name Is

When I was young and as soon as my folks taught me how to communicate, I thought my name was always, "NO!"

When I grew up and was educated in conformity by my teachers, I thought my name was almost always, "DON'T!"

Now that I have grown up to be an adult who has learnt to live in a barricade of systems, paying multiple taxes in various forms to a Government elected to power to take care of the welfare of my people and me-who I may question otherwise by the power vested upon me by the constitution, I begin to realize that my name is, "SHUT UP!"

"C'est la vie" I suppose...  

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

A Letter To You Know Who

Ego is too light a word to determine why some marriages fail; blame-games and usage of indecent thoughts and words are just symptoms beyond wrapping it as immaturity; hate and evil thoughts directed at someone by somebody are inbuilt ideas existing at the source from which it perpetrates. 


Watching some marriages fail, it just reinstates the common view of failure that most of us have in our mind; a thought that everything and everyone can be taken for granted and a time one gets to relax assuming that everything will be taken care of by someone else... even certain responsibilities that come with it. The perfect formula for failure no corporate rat or dummy's guide will teach you is something you make on your own incorporating ideas of everyone else other than you. It is this lax and assumptions that the society and its institutions builds within us that destroys us when we try to follow through with actions what these age-old depleted ideas impose upon us.


Morons do try to still stick to their ideas-imposed and transcribed by their mummies and daddies-sans realizing the response that awaits them. Newton did forewarn that every action has its equal and opposite reaction. At times, 'silence' very often as thought, does not mean that someone or a family is sitting listening up all nonsense and digesting in patience; it perhaps means they are recoiling, organizing and powering up the attack silently. 


All it takes is to simplify oneself devoid of grandiosity, mind one's language-perhaps even control and reduce it, take control of 'your own family'-perhaps realizing what 'your family' means in the first place and minding your own business instead of letting your wife live a life of a destitute and your child having a fatherless childhood as you pretend to wallop in your misery of force-fed ideas from your parents (from whose clutches you seem never to have grown.) Shameless fool!


All it takes for me right now is to sit back, relax and watch the rope that seemingly restrains you at the moment to get cut, the ties to get loosened and the bonds to get broken; and I for sure will hear a cry-not from your foolish fall or her's or your's together-yet from the drop of a child who trusted you and her and was holding on to the rope of hope that you both were so stubbornly and adamantly pulling from the sides squeezing and throttling the child's neck from both the sides. All it takes is nothing... for me to just sit back, watch and hear the rope crack.  

All it takes for you at the same time, is to use the rope, the bonds that tie and use it to bridge the gap and wrap your family together. All it takes is that and as simple as that. 

For now, let me tell you (you know who,) for the snake you know that I am for which I have often heard your compliments, that snake does not lie and no one better than he knows that there is a consequence to every sequence and the snake is silently and simply recoiling, waiting until you get near and to see you upclose. And with that dear, ends my final warning... 

Monday, November 9, 2015

Left or Right BAN Seems Alright

Just have this thing to ask:


If Kovan alias Sivadas may be arrested on charges of sedition for asking to BAN tasmac, why aren't a few others who are asking for BANNING a few other things be arrested on the same charge as well?! 

Didn't I hear someone say earlier that everyone is equal before the law?! If "they" can be free, then free Kovan too... If not, why not let the birds of the same feather, flock together in whites and stripes?!

One more doubt though... seems like the crowd of the mediocre, voting Indian citizen offended by what a bunch of religious fanatics belonging to a few conservative parties want to be BANNED; yet, the same crowd seem to find it acceptable when Kovan asks for the BAN of liquor under the banner of a so called 'liberal', thinking, leftist-Communist party. 
Are you fellows joking?! Left or Right, ABCD or Communist, seems like the choice every citizen has is the choice to decide whether to die at the jaws of the tiger or the bear's bloody paws; either way, weather forecasts seem to predict that "we are screwed!"...   

Moral of the story: Kovan or Poovan, Kuppan or Chuppan, everyone wants a ban... 'BAN' seems to be the only thing soon to be left sans a BAN. Ban India Ban...

Thursday, November 5, 2015

The Madness Industry

Recent Reflections:

1. 'Is money the root cause for all evil,' as I Timothy 6:10 (of the Bible) says or 'the lack of money that is the root cause for all evil,' as Mark Twain claims? I wonder

2.  Among the things British journalist Jon Ronson learned while researching his new book, “The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry”: was that the incidence of psychopathy among CEOs is about 4 percent-which was four times its actual prevalence in the population at large. 
In an article in Forbes magazine, Victor Lipman throws light into the idea that the hallmark of the psychopathic personality involves egocentric, grandiose behavior, completely lacking empathy and conscience and take others and humanity for granted. Additionally, psychopaths may be charismatic, charming, and adept at manipulating one-on-one interactions. In a corporation, one’s ability to advance is determined in large measure by a person’s ability to favorably impress his or her direct manager. Unfortunately, certain of these psychopathic qualities–in particular charm, charisma, grandiosity (which can be mistaken for vision or confidence) and the ability to “perform” convincingly in one-on-one settings–are also qualities that are supposed to help one get ahead in the business world. 

And I wonder if the definition for "Psychopaths" would be any different while one explains the evil results of "Capitalism"(?!) now that CEOs seem to be just the byproducts of capitalism and vice versa, it only seems to make more sense.

3. Doesn't it seem easier to convince people that you are 'normal' than to convince them that you are "insane"?! (Esp. taking into account the classifications in DSM and ICD and the checklist to fill to fulfill the requirements to be awarded with the title of insanity... nevertheless, time, geographical positioning, culture, customs, law of the land, traditions and other socio-economic-spiritual/religious-political and other spectrum to be taken into consideration)

Monday, November 2, 2015

In The Context Of Time

Strange period of time we live in these days
When everything is confusingly reversed...
When certain people in India who once had all the access to education and power, today, watch everyone they denied education to having absolute access to the same in the name of the very same banner of "reservation" under which it was earlier claimed.

Absolutely surprized am I
When the one who was enslaved rules and vice versa...
When the President of the US of A is black and the rapper who sings about his misery turns out to be a white guy called Eminem.

How more crazy can it get when you realize that
Everyone has been fooled by our "Welfare States"...
That apart from casting one's vote, there is no freedom or welfare that the politicians have managed to shell out for us that every vote supposedly promised us.
When you realize that education and health have become business of the richy' rich private parties as the government-our government-for the people, by the people and of the people-considers its business taking over and running Toddy and Liquor booths(?!)
For the best interest and "Welfare" of its citizens I suppose.
Meanwhile, there is collective response to promote secularism in school during children's formation on one hand by banning spiritual books and on the other, asking for spiritual books to be brought back into prisons, asylums and sanitariums to reform the wayward (?!)
It is equally interesting to witness the Good Books that were supposed to bring peace and love bring more of war and hate; perhaps it just reflects the rationale behind the fact that humans find it easier to kill a human life in the pretext of protecting an animal's... 'all for the glory of God' I must believe.

Interesting world am I in...
Where in the name of providing security, people agree to lose their privacy,
Women are offered protection from existing violence around as they immediately get criticized for the dress they wear that men and certain women choose to believe is the reason for all their misfortune and shell out rules on how to behave, dress and who to talk with. In the mean time Moms seem to find no fault in their 'laadla' sons anyway.  
Corporate houses run high, reaping profits, selling products that make no sense and people who feel an absolute need for anything and everything sold, proceed to amass the same with borrowed wealth to procuring things they don't need and enter a life of eternal debt.

Marveled am I to watch...
Citizens lose their civil rights in the name of having the same protected and freedoms being curtailed in the name of the same being promoted. And the minority few who show dissent against the policies of the government and question the same in absolute love for his/her country being targeted, dispelled and labelled "A GRAVE Internal Threat" as the majority-rest taking the cue, settle to rest with freebies thrown at them for the grabs and stay deaf, blind and mute to the nude king/queen's dance. 
Governments have become a burden than be of any use to the people and "Politics" as the name confirms, has become the thriving ground for "Poly" as in 'Many' and "Tics" as in 'Blood Sucking Insects".

Long live my country! Long live Democracy (whatever it means)! and Long live the rulers and the ruled!
(Well, some day you might all know that what once went up, sure came down too... Booh!) 

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

The Pervert Family


Few months back, an old couple visited my parent's home while I was there. What I witnessed was a sorry state of affairs of the elderly people trying to ruin an young couple's life.


With my limited knowledge of the psyche, I knew the very first time I met these people at their place that they were absolutely a misfit for any family to associate with; many didn't; one thing in particular that disgusted me, was the fact that they stuck like living parasites, like leeches they sucked money that they neither toiled for nor deserved from others in the name of customs and traditions; worse still, they neither had insight into the immorality of their action nor realized the perversion in their attitude. With insight and judgement lacking I looked in amazement at the victims of their action and wondered if they were dumb enough not to realize the speed at which they were pacing towards their own pitfall by wanting to string any attachment to them (?!)

The last time I met these imbeciles-retarded far behind their age-at my parent's, their behaviour had gotten only worser. They had gotten older and bolder with remorse and chronic dissatisfaction over everyone else's life they didn't own to compensate for the discontent and worthlessness of their own. They shamelessly placed orders for more plunder and more unjustifiable demands shaking their fingers like a shivering coward's. With my limited absorption into spirituality, I decided to speak finally after a prolonged period of customized silence and realized that i had nothing to speak yet let them know that I felt they would cry very soon. And today, they cry... "What goes around, comes around" thus saith my Grandfather and it did ;) 

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

One Other Paradox of our Time

The scenario throughout history remains a constant... as fashion and poverty remain in tatters, the rich, by virtue of their status, deem it their right to remain uncovered as the poor are doomed of their right to cover... and both remain exposed.

Reduced by poverty, one struggles to cover her naked body with all that she has as the other struggles to uncover herself with the little she has as she rise to riches. Man gapes in awe at both the cases; at one with a gust of pity and at the other with a gust of lust, captures both in the frames of his lenses, ships it across the coast and rakes money in the name of sympathy and glamour. An opportunist in both.

Man, oh Man, how have thee devolved so completely into those thin lines of desolate insanity (?!) and with so much ease. So long as life remains there shall ever be the hungry predator and the obliging prey as it seems...   
   

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Don't Read This If Cancer Is None Of Your Botheration

There was a time when trying to find a person surviving cancer was rare; this was not "long time ago, so long ago..."as the story must go; yet just a few decades ago when we did not have high radiation levels from cell phone towers, microwaves and wifis and all the devices like blue-tooth to cell phones to every other wifi-enabled computer device we use to track, trap and keep us connected to high levels of radiation so pointlessly, free-floating around without any control. Today, we stand at a precarious point of history where not knowing someone close to us-in family or friends-living with cancer is only a rarest or rarest chance. The ever growing debate over the cause of cancer must be rested instead of allowing it to be easily diverted to non-issues. 

Besides the pesticides used on vegetables for which we find it easier to attack the poor farmer, very often, the bigger and often hideous vendetta of the corporate world get carefully hidden in this diversion over the reason behind the cause of cancer; giant corporates who run the cell phone industry, the blue tooth gadgets, the wifi and the rest of the hi-fi gadgets that we so feverishly consume with pride, the scans that the doctors so deliberately send us to more than required and everything rich and populated to which we have become blind consumers of forced needs remain hardly questioned. The radiation from these sources are a whole lot more than we can imagine that kills us slowly yet systematically

Following are a few NEWS articles showing how countries which had this huge wi-fi frenzy earlier are giving up that obsession (countries like Australia which was the worst hit) and have decided rather than taking pride in having a 'wifi-free' campus, they would rather have a campus free of wifi-devices and save their children from irreversible damage:

Since 2010, five persons have died of cancer and five are battling the disease in Patel’s colony that has about 15 cell phone towers. 

Over 80 percent of those who succumbed to certain types of cancer resided approximately a third of a mile away from one of the hundreds of cell phone antennae that populate the city in Brazil. These cancers, primarily found in the prostate, breasts, lungs, kidneys, liver, are the ones associated with exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs).

“Being exposed to a mobile tower located within 50m of your home or workplace is like being in a microwave oven for 24 hours,” said Prof. Girish Kumar, department of electrical engineering, IIT Bombay. 

Large numbers of these (cell phone) towers  are mounted near schools, hospitals, residential and office buildings to provide good mobile phone coverage to the users. These cell towers transmit radiation 24×7, so people living within 100s of metres from the tower will receive 10,000 to 10,000,000 times stronger signal than required for mobile. 

"It is not legal to install cellular towers in residential areas without taking formal consent. People can complain at the MCD’s office of their zone," 

Australia takes special lead in promoting campuses free from wifi-radiation after sensing its harmful effect on children.
Get to read more about some crucial concerns it reflects here: http://www.wifi-in-schools-australia.org/p/blog-page_13.html


Not just as individuals, yet as parents that most of us are, it would be good for us to know and make more reasonable, informed and deliberate choices and hence this share :)  

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Trash Conferences

Pay for presenting your paper
Pay for publishing your paper
Pay for sharing your knowledge 
Are you kidding???

Would anyone be so desperate to do this or rather fall for this whimsical nonsense ?!
If the organizers do not have the means, what is there to aspire for, call for or be proud of at the end? 
Shouldn't it be the other way around where the knowledge-sharer gets paid for writing, publishing and sharing knowledge if at all it was worth it?! 


The reason for so much filth floating in the knowledge garbage is because of this; worthless pieces of thrash that we get to read these days being published for the cash that gets transactioned inbetween.  


Like those wedding invites, wish people know where to drop these stupid (pay for everything) conference invites... right into my dustbin and right where it belongs.  

Sunday, August 16, 2015

Through His Eyes


They said I was special
“The first” they said
Even literature would be happy with the names with which they called me
Well, I wasn’t born then.

“Selfish”, “Scoundrel”, “Rogue”…
Few of the more sensitive words I get to hear howled around me every now.
Before I go any further, let me introduce myself…
I am just a child who still can’t speak - caught between parents separated
Imprisoned in my mother’s “care” (or so she wishes to think)
As a child stand I scared; crying my pain through speechless walls I stare.

Some see the tears in my eyes
The farthest they can possibly see.
What must be running behind?!
Would anyone dare to see?

“Selfish” he calls her, “Not-even-a-man” she calls him
Each ridicule the other with audience to gape at every rap
Not understanding the words yet understanding the running emotion
Unattended I ran-in between them-with nowhere left to run
The only spoof of their marriage remains in the engraved names of each other in their torso
Lest they forget the other’s

Each tore the other apart with words meant to rip one’s heart
Spitting choice words picked from the gutter at each other’s face
Along they went with their fight unbothered even if it was over my hovering grave
Battles they fought and perhaps wars they win
With my soul to bear the scars within

Scared, surprised and stunned I lay not knowing who will collect my shattering pieces
Off they drifted into the big secure spaces of their egos
Dragging me into shallow worlds I didn’t want to go.
Everything they go through seems real to them 
Everything about them except me.

I will know the “truth” somebody said someday
And understand who was right and who was wrong…
Would I care to think that way?
A ‘knave’, a ‘rogue’, a ‘rascal’ one day I shall be and blame it on everyone to deem my right to be
You can take all the time you want then and decide
The rights and the wrongs and anything in between
And settle scores for yourself

A lifeless life I have now
With pretentious words and spontaneous lies
Secure places with insecure lives
Everyone trying to replace the other.
Every time I look out through the window
And get to see a child holding on to the hand of his father
All I want is that and nothing more;
Yet searching for that hand that is never there
Grasping in vain into thin air 
A fatherless child am I… for no fault of mine
for everyone to mock and stare

“Thank You” Mom; “Thank You” Dad for gifting this life
I’d rather not have;  
Where your lives mattered more than me
Someday I look forward to repay thee…

Monday, August 10, 2015

It's So Good To Fail

We are all beings of imitation; we imitate people who we appreciate; everything we do well is how well we have been able to imitate someone who has succeeded doing things we wished we could do too-be it the way we walk, the way we talk or perhaps even the way we think.

Masters of impersonation are we and with our greed to always excel, we would rather imitate someone who has done the same thing before us than try and attempt to do something our own. To do something our own, means, giving ourselves a chance, a chance to perhaps even fail; yet, we hate trying. We would rather 'cut, copy and paste' in our rush to success rather than give ourselves a shot to fail and perhaps to discover who we really are. We are all scared to fail and in that sense, have forgotten to create something new, something true, something real and above all something our very own that defines us. 

Success has always been history and with more and more conditioned, learnt behaviour being taught in schools and colleges, just an imitate-able impersonation... and just a boring repetition of history. At some point of time, rather than succeed in living a life of impersonation and imitation, tired and boring that we should get, why not attempt to do something ourselves even if it meant we would fail and give ourselves a chance to discover who we really are.  Failure teaches us something new, failure teaches us something more sacred than success, failure helps us learn more about who we are rather than what we are expected to be. It is a success to fail :)    

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Lets Support Greece


They showed us the Acropolis, brought sportsmanship through the Olympics, brought in the concept of 'Citizenship' to replace slavery, gave us Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and introduced philosophy, mythology and fables to the rest of the world.

And today, they are in debt...

Well, as a matter of fact, the debt the world community has for Greece far exceeds the financial debt it is in now. The European financial bullies, may hold their bark, for the country that introduced the Trojan Horse, will surprize everyone one more time very soon.

Dear people of Greece, Hold your head high and march on I wish you understand that the world is with you. Everything will be alright soon :) 

Ζήτω η Ελλάδα!

Monday, May 18, 2015

Why Corruption Is Good


Everything has a cost in the world today, everything is up for sale... cars, batteries, human lives
Womb to Tomb, everything is strained to the buyer for a quoted price
 Money and what it can do, can we sans despair realize its twining with civilization and its contribution to humanity

  
Corruption is what keeps things moving, guarantees speed and assures reaching us goods, services and everything inhuman (including humans) delivered with a smile in time
Corruption regulates government intrusion into market efficiency and ensures its regular functioning sans disruption
  

Corruption is man's protection against government's violation into his life directed and often guided within legal permit of the constitution 
Corruption helps us to walk safe and free instead of getting time to spend in prison for sins we never committed or perhaps did for which the mighty, lengthy (often confusing) hand of law might be used to frame, contain and restrain

Corruption is what helps us to jump lines, jump queues, jump traffic signals and jump taxes and if possible jump anything that comes our way
Corruption is what chooses the better equals amongst the rest of the lesser equals in a democracy
Corruptions helps decide who is right and who is wrong, who must stay and who must leave and in God-speed time if need be  

Corruption speeds things, clears paths, fixes roads, poles and tolls, restores faith and opens doors-even where we once thought there existed only a giant wall of bricks to bump our heads into
Corruption helps those that don't have a chance to win, with chances, to win

Corruption is what helps jump regulations that make no sense to you and I
Corruption makes everything accessible and available and opens up a world of opportunities with a carpet rolled till the offerer's feet's end 

Corruption can make the known unknown and the unknown known and makes it possible for facts to disappear without trace and to establish fallacies without doubt
Corruption can make the idiot look wise and the wise look like an idiot within a fraction of time

Corruption is how the farmer farms, the transporter moves, the merchant, the middle-men and the pimps in between make money over another man's labour, the seller sells, the buyer buys and you and I have food reach our tables in time

Corruption is what we have evolved to live by... Imagine a world without corruption... how disrupted would this world be otherwise?!


Hail Corruption! Hail Humanity!
  


Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Supreme Court Downs Its Hammer On PhD

Ahoy! Ahoy! Friends, Academicians and Country Men,

A recent Supreme Court ruling made wrt higher education. Am sure you would have already been informed yet sharing just in case.

After a recent judgment of the Supreme Court, candidates having got their PhD degrees prior to 2009 have been left with little chance of becoming a lecturer (assistant professor) in any college or university of the country.
The apex court has upheld the UGC regulations which provide for National Eligibility Test (NET) or State-Level Eligibility Test (SLET) or PhD as per UGC guidelines, 2009, as the essential qualification for lectureship.

For further reading: 
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/apex-court-allows-netslet-as-eligibility-for-selection-of-lecturers/#comments

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/patna/Supreme-Court-ruling-blow-to-aspiring-college-teachers/articleshow/46656115.cms

Thus NET becomes the essential requirement pushing PhD as only an additional qualification.

Congrats NET holders!

Monday, April 20, 2015

The Mining of Poverty

Title: The Mining of Poverty
Type: Socio-Political-Economic Analysis

Abstract:
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.” by Mahatma Gandhi


It is not NEWS that the believers of the ‗divine right‘ from the West as well as the pseudo-democratic champions of the East have both been abusing the rights and minority interests of the vulnerable for a very long period of time; yet, it must be realized that the impact thus created, has been quite severe on skewing the identity of the majority living within the barriers of geographical restrictions who end up bearing misrepresentations and its subsequent consequences.

Our resistance (as Indians) to global disparities and dialectics of internal and external identities that have emerged as a result of these causes has not altered as the majority still live in a state of complacency of ignorance; if not, apathy. Resistance to forced identities has remained unrevoked and the Indian identity that has been skewed on the parallel to favour some hypocritical agendas set forth by funding and funded organizations in the development sector, can be only set right upon the realization of the fact that this plunder and ruin have been silently and systematically hatched, patched and dispatched, ignoring the identity of the majority and of course, with a certain level of deliberated resistance towards this wrongful depiction and misrepresentation.

The following analysis at a socio-political-economic level, aims to disturb the complacency of silence in order to stop manifesting what necessarily does not represent the identity of every Indian and calls for rudimentary, majority response for its reversal.

Sample:
The Mining of Poverty
“The identity of an individual is essentially a function of his/her choices, rather than the discovery of an immutable attribute.” Amartya Sen

India has always been seen as a land of harvest if not by us, at least by the West. As we try to think that gone are those days, when the great whites packed up after reaching our shores and mining us off our riches that they controlled, reaped and shipped to their land to be preserved, wrapped and sold, it is equally pertinent to be a little watchful and realize that today those we believed to be gone, are back in our shores and this time, to mine us off our poverty instead. Their first stop often as they reach our land are the slums, pavements and areas of claimed-underdevelopment, poverty and hunger-their choicest destinations (often with good connectivity through air), where they pull out their point and shoot cameras, to do exactly what it is meant to do-point and shoot-megapixel after megapixel of great whites amidst the poor, vulnerable and unprotected lot in an impoverished nation that will soon get captioned, tagged, uploaded, downloaded and blown up to unimaginable proportions to be presented in slides, posters, brochures, coffee-table stand-alone and anything creative and unimaginable during hair-raising, fund-raising campaigns to a bunch of mesmerized audiences who fill the high-raised bowls of those that seek on behalf of those who are not even aware (nor ever will be.) Thus emerges a breeding ground for forced-need-based communities and strategic-greed-based organizations and the marriage of these two groups have become subsequently complementary for each other‘s survival.

In this rights-based-era we live in, with globalization in vogue, it is not just commodities that are traded yet often tags that come with an unstoppable influx of infused culture-new, foreign and distant to us; and as we stand in awe at the conqueror, we despise our own within the boundaries and step across even if it is in the risk of giving up our culture, traditions and freedom. There is a wide difference between these cross-cultural ideas; like the idea of feeling self actualized and satisfied that according to Western philosophy is possible when facilitated through the accumulation of materialistic resources to maximize satisfaction that is directly contradictory to the Indian philosophy that speaks about the idea of giving up materialism to attain nirvana. The solution to many problems in the Indian context cannot lie in plausible formulae that seems to have worked in the West or elsewhere; owing to the fact that there is a serious discrepancy in the way hypothetical assumptions have been made of Indians and India on the basis of flawed conclusions drawn from misrepresentation and ideas drawn from an equally plausible imagination... (full paper will be shared upon publication)

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Walls as a metaphor for the downfall of democracy


Main Theme: Sustainable Livelihood and Poverty Alleviation
Sub-Theme: Right-based and sustainable livelihood approach to the eradication of poverty
Title: Walls as a metaphor for the downfall of democracy
Type: Socio-Political Analysis

Abstract:
Arundhati Roy in her book, Listening to Grasshoppers, field notes on democracy, mentions, “Today, words like ‘progress’ and ‘development’ have become interchangeable with economic reforms, deregulation and privatization. ‘Freedom’ has come to mean ‘choice’. It has less to do with human spirit than with different brands of deodorant. ‘Market’ no longer means a place where you buy provisions. The ‘Market’ is a de-territorialized place where faceless corporations do business, including buying and selling ‘futures’. ‘Justice’ has come to mean ‘human rights’. This theft of language, the technique of usurping words and deploying them like weapons, of using them to mask intent and to mean exactly the opposite of what they have traditionally meant, has been one of the most brilliant strategic victories of the Tsars of dispensation. It has allowed them to marginalize their detractors, deprive them of a language to voice their critique and dismiss them as being ‘anti-progress’, ‘anti-development’, ‘anti-reform’ and of course ‘anti-national’. Talk about saving a river or protecting a forest and they say, “Don’t you believe in progress?” To people whose land is being submerged by dam reservoirs and whose homes are being bulldozed, they ask, “Do you have an alternative development model?’’[1]
This paper titled, “Walls as a metaphor for the downfall of democracy” aims to highlight the submerging trend of people’s voices along with their rights in the contemporary scenario. Taking into account the case of establishment of a nuclear power plant in Koodankulam and the chronological detailing of how a sustainable livelihood for poverty alleviation model that once pre-existed in the past, depleted under the pretext of bringing forth a futuristic, progressive, development plan; even if it meant by using brute force to trample upon voices of protests of pressure groups that tried to hold the fort for almost two decades and a half. Well, of course, using the rhythm in which walls are raised, as a metaphor, in an attempt to make the otherwise unpalatable digestible.  
Keywords: Democracy, Sustainable Development, Poverty Alleviation, Koodankulam, Nuclear Power, Pressure Group, Human Rights, Politics, Democracy
Note: Paper presented at the National Conference on ‘Sustainable Livelihood and Poverty Alleviation’ held at Tumkur Univeristy in March, 2015 and published in a book titled 'Sustainable Livelihood and Poverty Alleviation' (ISBN: 978-93-82694-21-2)

The Metaphor
There was a story once told of a young dreamer, a wonderer and a wanderer who lived his life like a complete stranger. They say, he, above anyone else, knew that he was just a visitor, a passerby on Earth who had nothing to take away with him no matter how hard he tried. Hence he lived; lived a life like life was meant to be lived; sans any trouble or fear to bother him. As he closed his eyes, he still saw light filled with sights of wonder of how the rain fell, grass grew and the dew drops remained; the doe pranced, volcanoes erupted and the fields nourished; the wind blew, flowers pollinated and the bees made their honey… everything under God’s plan was worth a wonder; everything made perfect and fell right into its place in the natural world. His eyes shone as he looked at the mesmerizing sight that lay in front of him… the world was whole and open; everything great and beautiful and he could not wait to share it. He didn’t have a name; perhaps he didn’t need one. He neither had an identity nor any imaginary boundaries nor friends to separate him from others and as far as he knew, he was part of the world and the world was a part of him. He stretched as far as his hands could reach and the winds flowing across the fields, mountains, trees and every passing stream seemed to blow the gentle breeze of freedom through.
Meanwhile, The genesis of the struggle to prevent the commissioning of a nuclear power plant in Koodankulam, a small hamlet in Tirunelveli District of Tamil Nadu, began when an Indo-Russian nuclear power project deal signed on the 20th of November, 1988 took just 29 days for people to understand the gloom that awaited them and triggered a series of protests, marches and rallies and everything possible within the limited legal permit for citizens, living in a right-based era, in a country that claims to run on the fuel of democracy, to rise up in resistance. Further, the hypocrisy of Communism of the Soviet Union was exposed as they explored the corporate corridors of other countries to expand their profit-churning bases. By the turn of that decade between 1989 and 1991, Soviet Union collapsed and as for the leaders who signed the pact, one lost power and the other his life. Eventually, it would only prove to be a curse for anyone whose name, title, corporate or country was named to be associated with the promotion of this project; an act of (pro-natural) God, which perhaps insurance companies wisely took note of and have refused to include the tag ‘death due to nuclear disasters’ under their liabilities to avoid payment of any compensation in the event of such a (t)error occurring.
By 1991, India opened up its economy under the visionary rule of Prime Minister Narashima Rao who in the name of ‘globalization’ stretched red carpets to the very doormats of corporate globally opening the very gateway of India for them to enter. Corporate culture was the name of the game and soon, the profit-oriented corporate world became a visibly-hideous transparent cloak that covered every throne of the political system regardless of what it was named.
Soon, more of our people’s representatives who would later come to power were quick to prove that the power that they got was only a means to an end to fuel their tanks with arson to condone people’s rights and shut voices of dissent (… Just as they give a ‘’V’’ sign in other parts of India to commission projects by mining corporates who get away with establishing hospitals to treat cancer under the pretext of their CSR initiatives which wouldn’t have been needed if mining was not done in the first place besides labelling and marking those who attempt to protect India’s ecology and geography as ‘’grave internal threats’’ as the easiest way to get rid of them. Amongst many other things, I wonder who the actual ‘’grave internal threat’’ are (?!)). Supplementary agreements to the nuclear deal like the one made on the 25th of March, 1997 by D. V Deve Gowda, the then Prime Minister of India and Russian President, Boris Yelsin were signed to commission a project report to just push forth the project.
By 1997, close to a decade past the initial agreement that was signed, the only notable change that seemed to have been made was an alarming increase from the initial estimated cost of INR 6000 crores to a re-estimated INR 17000 crores as the end-cost for the completion of the nuclear power project. Further, over the years, the elected babus in charge of our treasury would also agree to pay an interest to this mega sum for the delay caused due to the resistance of the people and soon, the nuclear power project which would shell a 20000 megawatt nuclear energy, was envisaged into the ‘Vision 2020’ chartered plan of India. Thus was ready a plan for the people, by the people, of the people, to the people… just that it did not take into account ‘the people’ whose life revolved around the ocean that would be immediately affected.

The Metaphor (Contd.)
Meanwhile in the story we started with, one day, our man woke up from a slumber. For the first time in his life, his heart squeezed deep and pounded hard against his chest… he knew something was out of place. He saw a few strange people in strange clothes circle around him like a wild beast circles its prey. But the new people seemed kind; they recognized the man’s reaction as ‘fear’ and reassured him mentioning once in a while that they were there only for his good and they cared about him. They promised they were well guided by some giant book called a ‘’constitution’’ that they had just come up with and it even had a concept called ‘development’ no one could refuse. ‘’It was after all for everyone’s good,’’ they said.
Soon there were machines that reached the meadows, trampling on the pristine grass. More people joined the few and they called themselves ‘the work force’. Bricks, cement, iron and sand were mixed and soon the work force forced itself to work. As our man panicked at the sight of the structure taking shape around him, people said that there was nothing to fear and it was just a wall. A wall for his safety and for his own good. Very soon, the walls covered all four corners and trapped everything within. Nothing more of what once he saw was in sight and all he could see were walls and nothing more than him trapped within.
Says Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in his book, The Discovery of India, “The Indian peasant in India more than anyone else, it is on his progress and betterment that India’s progress will depend.”[2]

Despite voices lifted by world leaders and technical experts, every sound made against the nuclear project or against the dangers of nuclear energy, proved to be only as unheard as the voices of the people from the ground. Simple and humble fishermen and those involved in fishing-allied occupation who were living an otherwise traditionally accepted, culturally admired life, recently termed ‘’sustainable livelihood’’ became silenced witnesses of an agony unfold in front of their eyes as the nuclear power plant at Koodankulam took form and took a venomous shape.
As others who neither cared nor bothered, pretended to be ignorant and apathetic, the people of Koodankulam and its surrounding area were perplexed with the idea of a nuclear power plant for various reasons that include:
1.      The reactor being set up without sharing the safety and evaluation reports made up experts with the public
2.      The know-not about what will happen to the people who would be displaced from around the ‘sterilization zone’
3.      The safety precautions and disaster management measures that were yet to be brought in place to protect the people living in close proximity to the reactor, who would have to be evacuated in case of an emergency
4.      The precautions taken for emission control
5.      The quality of the material used for construction which were said to be substandard by the very workers and contractors building the plant
6.      The durability of the plant built close to the ocean in case of a natural disaster like the tsunami or its likes that is not uncommon in those parts
7.      The ability of the our national security force especially the navy who find it difficult to protect our fishermen who might have to protect this structure in case of a terrorist threat
The ‘right to fear’ seems to be the only right left, sanctioned and accepted, that remains with the people. And as far as that right might stretch, the people concerned about the existence of a nuclear power plant around civilian population wondered why at a time when the US of A and Russia have refrained from building a single nuclear plant for over 2-3 decades, having learnt their lessons from the Three Mile Island tragedy, the tragedy at Chernobyl and the recent tragedy from Fukushima, isn’t it interestingly strange that in India alone, everything outdated-product, idea and people included-phased out from the rest of the world, is always seen as a new entrant into the market. Are we just an emerging junkyard of the West?! Again, with India just limping back from the Bhopal tragedy to even arrive at a judgement that took a jolly good 3 decades, by the time during which the main accused himself lived a decent life and died a natural death, leaving us with no one left to judge, would we need a better illustration than this to demonstrate how swift our justice system is to handle a situation if it happens again?
With many questions left unanswered (still), by the turn of the century, with the phantom of the most feared Y2K bug gone, a new bug called the Year 2000 Koodankulam (Y2K) bug was approved by the Centre and money was released to begin the excavation work for the nuclear project on the 23rd of June, 2001. Thus began our excavation of a pit big enough to contain people and their rights along with their pleas, tears and anything else left in them to shed; thus began in parallel, the excavation to dig a giant grave for democracy.

The Metaphor Ends
Moments after he realized what had just happened around him, he stunned himself awake and arose to let out a scream… a scream of despair, a scream of helplessness and a scream to be heard. Again, the people he had met at first came along with some more special people, dressed in special robes to tell him that everything was alright. Unconvinced, he said that nothing was and insisted that his freedom be returned to him; the freedom especially from the structures they now called ‘’walls’’. The others had now planned their laced and coached speech perfectly and had learnt to deliver it even better; they said he was a barrier to development and it was not civilized of him to reject movement in the path of building a future ahead of him right now. They said it was too late for him to ask for anything and were ready to sacrifice him for the sake of the wall. When he asked one more time for his freedom, they said that ‘’freedom,’’ was a concept. They urged him to dream beyond the walls; dream of the meadows and the high mountains and the stream that flows; they asked him not to stop dreaming… ‘’That is where freedom lies,’’ they said. It didn’t take long for the man to wonder… what was it that he was experiencing for real before the walls were built around him then?!
Rabindranath Tagore in his speech delivered in the US of A in 1925 mentioned, “India has never had a real sense of nationalism. Even though from childhood I had been taught that idolatry of the nation is almost better than reverence to God and humanity, I believe I have outgrown that teaching, and it is my conviction that my countrymen will truly gain their India by fighting against education which teaches them that a country is greater than the ideals of humanity.’’[3]
Today, in this land of the Gandhi-the magical barrister who once returned from the West to gain our long lost freedom, who is seen not more occasionally than once less too often on the silver screen of a movie theatre managing to give us a blockbuster and perhaps nothing more, Gandhian values and views of ahimsa and non-violence are seen more as one’s vulnerability to be cornered, harassed and abused when followed just as the protestors of Koodankulam realized two and a half decades later since they began their fight for right and justice. Right from the 1st of May, 1989 when a transport bus was driven into a crowd of protestors in an attempt to disperse them to the 10th of September, 2012 when police lathi-charged and opened fire on the protestors, people have relentlessly tried every other way to withstand the brutal force of the brutes to sustain their livelihood. Yet, it moves. The High Court on the 31st of August, 2012 gave a ‘go-ahead’ sign to the nuclear power project to operate which incidentally seemed to be a clear sign enough to signal the ‘go-to-hell’ to democracy.
Says Amartya Sen in his book, The Idea of Justice, “The force of a claim for a human right would indeed be seriously undermined if it were possible to show that it is unlikely to survive open public scrutiny. However, contrary to a commonly offered reason for scepticism and rejection of the idea of human rights, the case for it cannot be discarded simply by pointing to the fact-a much invoked fact- that in repressive regimes across the globe, which do not allow open public discussion, or do not permit free access to information about the world outside the country, many of these human rights do not acquire serious public standing. The fact that monitoring of violations of human rights and the procedure of ‘naming and shaming’ can be so effective is some indication of the reach of public reasoning when information becomes available and the ethical arguments are allowed rather than suppressed. Uncurbed critical scrutiny is essential for dismissal as well as for justification.’’[4]                                                                                    

To Conclude, let me just take this opportunity to make it loud, clear and in bold that the road of oppressive development where ‘’democracy’’ is nothing more than a word used to cover a repressive monster, ‘sustainable livelihood’ and ’poverty alleviation’ will remain nothing more than a mere mockery of additional words spelt right at the face of the human spirit. Especially those faces that once had it all, and lived a life not knowing what freedom was until it was taken away from them in the name of bringing in ‘’development’’ and in the name of ‘’democracy’’-the meaning of those words that only a few who control it seem to know. Has ‘’freedom’’ then, become a rationed commodity for a few to own or could they that claim to know, explain the concept of freedom and its detachment from democracy to them that stand lost, searching for the same within those hovering walls of development please?..    

Reference: [i], [ii], [iii]            


[1] Arundhati Roy, 2009, Listening to Grasshoppers, field notes on democracy, New Delhi, Penguin Books
[2] The Discovery of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, 1969, Bombay, Asia Publishing House
[3] The World’s Greatest Speeches, Nationalism in India by Rabindranath Tagore, 1999, Mineola, New York, Dover Publications
[4] Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice, 2009, New Delhi, Penguin Books



[i] Dr. S. P. Udayakumar, The Koodankulam Handbook, 2004, Tamil Nadu, Transcend South Asia
[ii] Newzfirstbureau, The Koodankulam timeline: 24 years of struggle, 9th December, 2012 retrieved from http://www.newzfirst.com/web/guest/full-story/-/asset_publisher/Qd8l/content/the-koodankulam-timeline:-24-years-of-struggle?redirect=/web/guest/full%20story as on 12th March, 2015
[iii] Reasons against Koodankula nuclear power project, Dr. S. P. Udayakumar, as on 10th March, 2015 retrieved from www.dianuke.org/thirteen-reasons-against-the-koodankulam-nuclear-power-project/